or could figure out that it couldn’t be extracted. I had to eradicate it myself.
“I see you’re following along, so that must mean you need to be fucked again,” he said huskily. “I am enjoying this a little more than I should, but being buried in your warmth is my favorite place in the entire world. In fact, I think you’re the most beautiful thing your mother ever created. You’re definitely the most stubborn creation she’s used on me.”
“If it is true, then why wouldn’t the Stag just tell me?” I countered hesitantly, turning over onto my back and groaning loudly as my body burned from being overused. It took everything I had just to roll over. He’d depleted me, sapping all my strength until I was too weak to crawl away from him.
“Because the Stag is actually Cernunnos, the Lord of the Wild Things,” Ryder chuckled. “He is also known as the Horned God, and he is Zahruk’s grandfather. Cernunnos created the shapeshifters, and then Danu gave his only daughter to Alazander as a test to see what would come from fucking a wild thing. Unfortunately, she wasn’t impressed. So your mother and Bilé created more creatures and fed them to my father to breed. They made him go mad with the need to breed, creating an army of Bilé’s sons under the guise of needing to produce a daughter, which Danu assumed would balance the world out as she desired it to be. Only when Ciara was born, she wasn’t what Bilé expected, so he had Alazander take her apart to see why she wasn’t equipped to save the world. Danu saw this and began making plans to create you.
“Synthia, we are nothing to Danu and Bilé. We’re the game pieces they move around when they want something or become bored. So, we slowly rebuilt ourselves to become strong enough to stop them. I started exploring the world while following my father’s orders. Zahruk helped me, and others joined against them. I’m tired of being their toy. I will not allow Bilé to destroy this world because he is grieving. He gets one option, he takes this,” he said, holding up the vial from my necklace. “He can either crawl his worthless carcass back to the Underworld, or he dies, and we leave here and go to the world we will create.”
“You expect me to believe you? You’ve been lying to me since day one!”
“I told you not to underestimate me, little girl. I told you I am the biggest and strongest thing in all of Faery. You didn’t listen, and it’s been fun watching you try to put the pieces together. I was willing to play along with your mother’s games, but then you tried to fucking turn me into the god that I already am. You wanted to change who and what you thought I was. I told you from day one I wouldn’t change for anyone, not even you. I am who they created me to be, and while you helped me greatly by combining the beast, the one thing Bilé couldn’t accomplish—nor your mother, for that matter—you don’t get to take away my choices.
“I never took away your choices, Synthia. You only think I did. I stood by and watched you walk away from me to save the land. You almost married Adam because you wanted to save the world to protect your precious human race. You walked away from me by choice. You entered Faery during the Wild Hunt—again, by choice. I offered you an out, Syn. I offered to open those fucking doors in that club to allow you to leave with no questions asked. The only time I ever intervened with your choices was when you held my children within your womb.”
“We lost a child so that I could get you back!” I cried.
“No, we lost a child because you thought I was fucking weak. You didn’t trust me to get out of that situation on my own. You violated the laws of the gods. I never imagined you would come for me. You weren’t supposed to do that.”
“You realize that if I hadn’t, you’d have fed on an entire room of children. You were crazed when